Illinois Football: 5 observations from the Illini win over Northwestern

4. The Illini are starting to dominate the Northwestern series

Over the past decade, the Illinois football program has been in a rough spot. The quarterback situation was always a mess, and we just weren’t winning games consistently.

I think the thing that showed Illinois’ struggles the most was the rivalry game against Northwestern. The amount of losing was a microcosm of what the Illini were going through as a program.

From 2015 through 2020, the Illini were 0-6 against the Wildcats with only one of those games being a loss by fewer than 10 points. Northwestern averaged beating us by 18.5 points per game during that stretch.

You could actually expand the struggles against Northwestern even further. From 2012 through 2020, Illinois had only beaten the Wildcats one time. That is actually an embarrassing number considering how bad of a program Northwestern has been in the history of college football.

Thankfully, there is a new regime in town. Bret Bielema took over the Illinois football program, and losing to Northwestern has stopped. Illinois had one win in nine seasons against the Wildcats. In Bielema’s first two years, he has two wins against Northwestern.

In the two wins, the Bielema-led Illini have demolished the Wildcats. The combined score of the two games is 88-17. We are beating them by an average of 35.5 points per game. The 38-point drubbing of Northwestern on Saturday was the fifth-biggest win Illinois has ever had in the rivalry.

This is how things are supposed to be. Everything is right in the world when Illinois is dominating Northwestern. Look for this to be a trend moving forward as well. I don’t see the domination stopping anytime soon.